Word to the Wise: Protracted

"Protracted" (proh-TRAK-tid) – from the Latin for "to drag forth" – means drawn out or prolonged.

Example (as used by Terrence Rafferty in The New York Times): "[Bette Davis's] breakthrough role… came in John Cromwell’s 1934 adaptation of the W. Somerset Maugham novel Of Human Bondage, in which she plays the coldhearted Cockney temptress Mildred Rogers, a vile specimen who cruelly – and protractedly – abuses the affections of a sensitive, artistic, clubfooted young medical student."